Re: OT: graffitum

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On 7/28/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>
>>>I also routinely refer to an individual pasta noodle as a "spaghetto".
>>
>>:)
>>
>>That is indeed also correct Italian. It is a diminutive of 'spago' =
>>"rope."
>
> But do Italians actually use it that way?  IME they treat "spaghetti" as a
> collective.
No, as a plural, surely, just like the French do: 'les spaghettis'. We
had a French student staying with us once who habitually carried this
habit over into English and, when cooking, would tell us the "The
spaghetties are ready." Note also the plural verb - which would be used
in Italian also.

We can call the word as a collective only if it has singular agreement,
as it does in English: "The spaghetti is ready."

Whether, on the hand, Italians readily call a single stand of spaghetti
'uno spaghetto', I don't know.

>
>>BTW I've commonly seen 'grafitti' and even 'grafitty' - I kid you not
>>{sigh}
>
> That's that rapper guy, right?  Grafitty Cent?
Presumably that's whee he got his name from - but I have seen 'grafitty'
written just meaning 'graffiti'. The word seems to be commonly
mis-spelled with one F and two Ts, tho the ending -i is IME more common
than -y.
----------------------------------------

Eugene Oh wrote:
 > 2007/7/29, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>:
 >
 >>That's that rapper guy, right?  Grafitty Cent?
 >>
 >>
 >>--
 >>Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
 >>
 >
 > HAHAHA. That's all with which I can respond!
 >
 > But in all seriousness, I assume then that "graffiti" is an Italian
 > coinage, derived from a Latin borrowing of "graph-" from the Greek and
 > infused with a sense of diminution?

Forget the Latin bit. There was a Latin borrowing, 'graphium', but that
means a "writing-style" - nothing to do with scratchings etc. Nor does
it account for the -ff- in the Italian.

'graffito' is indeed a diminutive - of the noun Italian noun 'graffio' =
"scratch". There is also a verb "graffiare" ='to scratch'.

Certainly they must be connected to the Greek graph-ein "to write." But
the word must have entered popular proto-Italian speech directly from
Greek - remember that in antiquity Sicily and much of southern Italian
was a Greek speaking area. Two small Greek-speaking enclaves survived in
southern Italy certainly till the last century - and AFAIK they still
survive.

On that fascinating note, I must bid all farewell, as I'm away in Paris
until Wednesday.

Ciao!

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB]